Nilgün
ÖZTÜRK / PHED / METU
‘The awed wonder that science can
give us is one of the highest experiences of
which the human psyche
is capabl e... to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver.’
- Richard Dawkins.
- Richard Dawkins.
In the past, human life was not so
good that the history told us. For a privileged minority, life was pretty but
for the large predominance; it was awful, ugly and short. Mankind is a living
creature who is sane, could try to find innovations with their mind and
transver knowledge to other generation.
Not together with religious dogmas but with the help of science and
artifice, mankind reached today’s stage. No longer, today’s people expects
regular raise in their life standarts which is provided by the development of
science and technology. Today, the world of science pursue to solve and ease
the problems of the mankind in the commercial purpose.
On the other hand, community in
Turkey still hesitate towards science because they do not understand and rely
on science. Science is told in schools with a boring manner. Students are
encouraged about memorizing in order to pass, therefore they can not realize
the relationship between science and the real world. Science which is learnt by
only equations, frighten most of the people. Turkish people have a mentality
like ‘ My little food, my warm head.’ With this stance, they do not regard
secular life and continue with a life in which they just live from hand to
mouth. People in the west try to invent something in their garage but this
picture could not be seen in Turkey, unfortunately. Moreover, in turkey,
searching fundings of scientific
organizations like TUBITAK functions money transfer to religious communities
implicitly. TUBA is turned off,
even for the sake of political interests.
Finally, the effort of seperation from CERN
is connected to the justification of lack of infrastructure. With this wrong
understanding, we can easily guess the Turkey’s
future that is going to the depths of the Middle Ages. Independently of all
causes, this depressing table of Turkey’s approach to science must be the most
important reason which feed our passion of science teaching as Turkish physics
teachers.
Now, we are in the
age of science and
technology which growing at
a dizzying pace. Human life is shaped by science
and its welfare is provided by science, too. From the origin of the universe to nanotechnology, from
robotics to genomics or from communication and information
technology to gene therapy, the war of science and technology
continues.
So what is science? A
fat textbook? White laboratory coats or microscopes? An astronomer peering
through a telescope? Einstein's
equations scribbled on a chalkboard? (Online Document, berkeley.edu, nd.)
‘Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural
and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.’ (Online
Document, Science Council, 2012) In
order to find evidences as stated in the above definition, scientists must do
researches. In turkey, most of the researches are done in universities. ‘The
place of the Turkey in the world’s scientific collocation was 41st
in 1983 and 20th in 2006.’ (Bozcuk, A.,N., Neden bilim, neden
evrim?, nd.) On the other hand, the
number of scientific citations of Turkey and the number of applying for patents
do not increase in the same rate. Besides, the share from the Gross National
Product for research and development is far back compared with the share in
developed countries. Architect of great successes has always been science
people and educated brains in the world. In contemporary world the relationship
between science and technology is become clear. Therefore, when ‘Why teach
science?’ is asked, the short answer of the question is that ‘because science
is the key of development’. In addition, unless changing the people through education,
development called evolution can not be seen. The big leader ATATÜRK also said
‘Our true mentor in life is science.’
R. Steven Turner adressed the issue why do we teach
science and why knowing matters in his paper on science education. In the
paper, Turner explored four different arguments which are identified as economic, democratic, skills and cultural
arguments that could be used to answer the why question.
In the economic argument,
‘students are channeled upward to post-secondary schools to study science,
technology and engineering. The goal is produce more scientists and engineers
to meet the supply demands in science-related fields. The problem is that
crises in manpower shortages has been greatly exaggerated and only 2/3′s of
people majoring in science actually take jobs in science.’ (Online
Document, Art of Teaching Science, 2010)
In the democratic argument,
‘the curriculum would be quite different than the economic/standards-based
design. It would focus on the technological and real-world applications of
science. Science curriculum would focus on what students would need to know to
participate in key controversies of the time, global warming, energy,
environmental issues, and health. The humanistic argument is the central
argument in the STSE movement (science, technology, society, environment). The
STSE movement is not the dominant paradigm used in science curriculum, although
one can find “STSE Standards” in the NSES publication.’
(Online Document, Art of Teaching Science, 2010.) Yet the research, as reported, supports the inclusion
of STSE curriculum in school science, and that it does contribute to positive
attitudes among students who take science courses.
In the skills argument,
‘the mere study of science instills certain transferable skills that are
important to students’ understanding of science. The skills argument is the process
of science argument that is strongly advocated by science education
researchers, and by organizations such as the National Science Teachers
Association. Indeed, the skills argument claims that students should be
involved in hands-on activities, analyze data, and plan open-ended
investigations. The skills argument is the argument that suggests that teachers
should use an inquiry-approach to teaching and help students learn how to
practice inquiry.’ (Online Document, Art of Teaching Science,
2010.)
In the cultural argument,
‘ the history and philosophy of science should play an integral role in science
curriculum. Presently, lip service is played to this approach.’
(Online Document, Art of Teaching Science, 2010.) Robin Millar argues that we must reduce the amount of
content that dominates the science curriculum, and in its place present to
students a coherent and cohesive world picture of science that tell students
stories of sciences great stories from quarks to superclusters and genes and
gerontology. ‘The cultural argument could produce a curriculum that would
interest students, and might reduce the general trend which is the more science
courses students take, the less they like science.’ (Online
Document, Art of Teaching Science, 2010.)
After the most scientific part of the
writing, in conclusion: it is very difficult to make out whether or not there
is a future of the world for science people. For Example, because of the time
interval for air to centre the world is 5 days, we could made maximum five-day
wheather forecast. The rest is up to statistics and the wheater conditions.
Generally, we love everything to be
specified before, however; it cannot be; as we never know what is really
specified. In general, it is accepted that, universe is evolved by well
specified laws. These laws can be new found by scientists as well as God’s
laws. Nevertheless; God does not treat to universe to break these laws. The
time specified in holly books for the ending of universe has passed several
times. All the time there has been an excuse for the passed date and new
explanations has appeared. Scientific claims like weather condition reports may
not be more correct than prophets and oracles. Regardless of anything, Turkish
people must be involved in such kind of studies and join those arguments. For
this reason, Turkey should not miss the opportunity of joining the CERN,
if they do not want to lose anything about technology and science. There are
already more tan 100 Turkish people working in the CERN.
The substructure of application of the technologic developments obtained in CERN
will occur in Turkey by time. Altough we have a prophet saying ‘If science is at China, go there’ and
a leader saying ‘Our true mentor in life is science’, it will be a huge mistake
to step back from scientific developments for 70 million dollars. Even though
we have the star and the crescent in our national flag, we are very far away
from space and universe. It is found really ironic and weird by other nations.
REFERENCES
:
- Understanding Science.
2012. Retrieved from undsci.berkeley.edu/article/whatisscience_01
- The Guardian Science
Blog. 2009. Retrieved from www.sciencecouncil.org/definition
- Biyoloji Eğitim.
2011.Retrieved fromwww.biyolojiegitim.yyu.edu.tr/ders/ev/sem/evrb/1.pdf
- J., Hassard.
2010. Retrieved from www.artofteachingscience.org/2010/11/25/why-do-we-
teach-science/
- Taek. 2009. Retrieved from www.taek.gov.tr/uluslararasi/cern/314-cern-deneyleri-ve-
turkiye.html
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